MIAMI– A federal grand jury in Miami has charged the Venezuelan co-founder of a voting machine company targeted by allies of former President Donald Trump with paying more than $1 million in bribes to officials in the Philippines in exchange for contracts he won overseeing the country’s elections. island. almost a decade ago.
The Department of Justice in a declaration Thursday said Roger Pinate and a colleague at Boca Raton, Florida-based Smartmatic funneled bribes to the chairman of the Philippine electoral commission through a slush fund created by overcharging the cost of each voting machine provided to authorities. . The payments, between 2015 and 2018, were made to obtain business from the Philippines and ensure timely payment for their work, the Justice Department said.
To hide the corrupt payments to Juan Donato Bautista, former chairman of the Philippine Election Commission, the co-conspirators allegedly created a secret fund – codenamed “Philippine Pot,” according to investigators – and fake loan agreements to justify transfers to accounts banks located in Singapore, Europe and the United States.
The investigation by Smartmatic executives began in 2017, when Bautista’s wife informed investigators in the Philippines that her husband had obtained $20 million in unexplained wealth, some of it in piles of cash found in their home.
Bautista was indicted last year in Miami in a criminal complaint that accuses him of accepting bribes in exchange for awarding an unidentified company nearly $200 million in contracts to provide tens of thousands of voting machines and related services for the presidential election in 2016.
Smartmatic, in a statement, said it had placed the two employees on leave, effective immediately.
“No election fraud has been alleged and Smartmatic has not been charged,” the company said in a statement. “Voters around the world must be assured that the elections they participate in are conducted with the utmost integrity and transparency.”
Pinate co-founded Smartmatic more than two decades ago and its early success is partly attributed to important contracts from the government of Hugo Chávez, an early adopter of electronic voting, in Pinate’s home country of Venezuela. It has since expanded globally and helped hold elections in 25 countries, from Argentina to Zambia, as well as several European countries.
Pinate and Jorge Miguel Vasquez were each charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison. They both reside in South Florida. Along with Elie Moreno, who has dual Venezuelan and Israeli citizenship, they were also charged with several counts of money laundering that carry a maximum sentence of 20 years.
Smartmatic sued Fox News for spreading false claims that software it developed changed the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election. In April, another conservative media outlet, One America News Network, settled with Smartmatic over similar allegations for undisclosed terms.
LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, who allegedly funded Smartmatic’s expensive defamation lawsuit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the accusation against Smartmatic executives.
Smartmatic has also sued several Trump allies, including his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, but the lawsuits against him are on hold pending your bankruptcy case throw it away.
Fox News previously I tried without success be removed from the case, which also named hosts Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro and former host Lou Dobbs. An appeals court dismissed the lawsuits against Fox Corp., the network’s parent company, but Smartmatic refiled them.
Fox countersued under a New York law against lobbying in frivolous litigation to try to silence reporting or comment on public matters. Smartmatic I tried in vain for these counterclaims to be dismissed.
